Racial tirade in Hingham goes worldwide

Hingham police have assigned extra patrols to the home of a Hingham woman, whose is depicted in a video posted on YouTube, engaging in a racial tirade against a black letter carrier outside her house in October 2009.

Hingham police have assigned extra patrols to the home of a Hingham woman, whose is depicted in a video posted on YouTube, engaging in a racial tirade against a black letter carrier outside her house in October 2009.

The recently posted videos of the incident have gone worldwide, fueling some beliefs — through a barrage of e-mails circulating on the Internet including her name, address and phone number — that Hingham is a racist town and that nothing was done.

Although the victim, Hugson Jean, 47, of Roslindale — who was allegedly slapped in the face during the incident — said he does not want any harm to come to his former customer. The video has drawn so much attention that TV stations and other media have descended upon the woman’s home.

Jean claims he was subsequently fired from his job because the U.S. Postal Service “did not want to get involved in this assault.” He said the USPS never investigated the racially charged incident. “They thought if they did not deal with it, it would just disappear,” he said.

The video captured on Jean’s cell phone depicts Erika Winchester, 60, becoming upset when Jean refuses to accept a certified letter that she had signed for. The video then shows her firing off a volley of racial slurs while Jean was seated in his post office truck.

Following the Oct. 9, 2009 incident, police summoned Winchester — who allegedly slapped the postal worker on the face during the outburst – to court to face the charge of assault and battery/hate crime.

Police said Jean did not want to press charges when they talked to him immediately following the incident and at the hearing on Nov. 6, 2009, his attorney asked that the charge not be issued but be held in abeyance for a year and dropped if there were no further incidents.

However, Jean said while he did not want Winchester arrested, he thought she should be prosecuted. He said he was baffled when told what the police said about asking to have the charges dropped. He said he was never notified about the hearing and has been unable to obtain a transcript.

In a telephone interview Friday, Winchester said several years ago that she had been “shooed out” out of the post office, with which she said she has had ongoing problems, about a dispute with a post office box. She had no idea about the YouTube video but said the media was on her doorstep.

Winchester, who was reluctant to talk without consulting her lawyer, described Jean as a nice man with whom she had had no prior problems in the months he had delivered her mail. She did not think the incident involving her could be related to his job loss.

“I am sorry for him and his job – but that has nothing to do with me,” she said. “He dropped the charges against me